DEFENSE R&D OUTLOOK
A Global Collaborative Network
U.S. ARMY COLLABORATION WITH ACADEMIA EXPANDS THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT’S SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ECOSYSTEM By Jan Tegler
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Open Campus and Outreach at ARL Leonard is the program manager for ARL’s Open Campus initiative, a framework launched in 2014 to open the laboratory’s world-class facilities and research opportunities to partners from academia and private industry domestically and internationally. The basic idea behind it is to connect ARL scientists and engineers with outside researchers
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Brazilian post-graduate researcher Isabella Costa (left) works alongside Dr. Victoria Blair, a materials engineer in the Ceramics and Transparent Materials Branch at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, on the hunt for materials science breakthroughs. The lab’s Open Campus model enabled the collaboration between Costa and Blair, and made ARL’s facilities and research opportunities accessible to the Brazilian graduate student.
U.S. ARMY PHOTO BY DAVID MCNALLY
merica’s armed forces are under pressure. Nearly 20 years (and counting) invested in fighting a global war on terrorism has largely kept the United States safe from terrorist attacks, but the effort has taken a toll on the nation’s readiness for major conflicts and significantly diminished its military edge. Great power competition is back. While America has been engaged in the Middle East, China and Russia have transformed their militaries to counter U.S. power directly and indirectly. Targeted science and technology research along with technological theft has allowed these near-peer competitors to narrow capability gaps in some areas and perhaps equal or surpass the American military in a few. In response, the Department of Defense (DOD) is renewing and expanding its own science and technology research efforts to gain back or widen the military’s advantage in combat power across multiple domains. The quest for additive and transformational technology is being pursued aggressively within the armed forces’ respective research establishments and beyond. Outreach to gain access to knowledge and innovation is critical, and one of the prime assets America has is its unmatched network of research universities. The U.S. Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Army Research Office (ARO) are tapping into this resource as never before, forging new, broader partnerships with academia. ARL’s Wendy Leonard said the Army is trying to “bring together the government labs, academic institutions, and the private sector to form a global collaborative network.”
